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Pepi Lederer (born Josephine Rose Lederer; March 18, 1910 – June 11, 1935) was an American actress and writer. She was the niece of actress Marion Davies, the longtime mistress of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. After her parents divorced, Lederer was raised in Southern California by her wealthy aunt at her Beverly Hills estate and later at Hearst Castle in San Simeon.
As a high-spirited lesbian, Lederer became a popular figure in the gay and bisexual community of Jazz Age Hollywood. She had many sexual relationships with women, including actress Nina Mae McKinney. In May 1935, due to either her drug addiction or sexual orientation, William Randolph Hearst committed Lederer against her will to a psychiatric ward at Good Samaritan Hospital.
In June 1935, a 25-year-old Lederer committed suicide by jumping from a sixth-floor hospital window. Although early newspaper obituaries reported her death as a suicide, obituaries in Hearst's papers depicted her death as an accident and attributed her hospitalization to "a nervous breakdown caused by overstudy". Lederer is buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles.
Due to her mother Reine's alcoholism, her aunt Marion Davies raised Lederer and her brother, and the two children lived in Davies' luxurious Beverly Hills estate. Lederer's mother occasionally appeared uninvited and accused Davies of stealing her children.: "Pepi said that her mother had called Marion a scheming bitch for having robbed her of her children." When Davies entered into a relationship with publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst, Lederer and her brother moved with Davies to the Hearst Castle, where she spent much of her early youth during the 1920s. At this time, Lederer attended the Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles, California, and graduated in 1926.
Although Hearst and Davies encouraged her brother Charles's ambition to become a screenwriter, they regarded Lederer's ambition to become a screen actress far less seriously.: "In contrast to their serious treatment of her brother Charlie Lederer, for whom they obtained a screenwriting job at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio, their treatment of Pepi was that accorded a naughty, entertaining child, incapable of any serious endeavor.": "Secretly, she had yearned to be a movie actress.... Pepi realized that no one had been really serious about her career—it was just a gag." Davies secured a part for her niece in her 1927 film The Fair Co-Ed, but the final cut eliminated Lederer's role in the film. Davies promised her distraught niece a role in another upcoming film, but her acting career consisted only of a few small parts in Davies' films.
Alone in New York, Lederer lived in an apartment at 42 West Fifty-fourth Street and continued having sexual relations with women. During this period of exile, Lederer became friends with actress Alma Rubens, and both women allegedly shared an addiction to drugs, including heroin and morphine, supplied by Marion Davies' doctors.: "When Pepi hung up, she cried, 'Quick, Watson, the needle!' and dashed off to the apartment of the actress Alma Rubens, in the same building.": "Pepi was much sobered when, after an hour, she returned from Alma's apartment. She had to wait till one of Marion's doctors came to give Alma an injection of morphine. Pepi had found her pacing up and down like a madwoman. All her money had gone to the drug-sellers". A 33-year-old Rubens died a year later in January 1931.
Following a riotous New Year's Eve party in 1930, a male acquaintance drove an inebriated Lederer to her New York apartment and, after she became unconscious, raped her. At the end of March 1930, while still in New York, Lederer discovered she had become pregnant by her rapist. As an overt lesbian exclusively attracted to women, the news of Lederer's pregnancy shocked her friends and family. Acting on advice from her aunt Marion,: "Marion told her to stop wasting time.... and to make an appointment to see an abortionist at once." Lederer procured a black-market abortion.: The doctor "found that Pepi was pregnant, and aborted the fetus the next day." The abortion resulted in severe complications that caused her lingering health problems.: "At the end of March, I stopped by the Warwick to see Pepi and found her in bed, sick, feverish, and frightened. She had had an abortion and was hemorrhaging badly."
In April 1935, Lederer returned to the United States with her girlfriend, Monica Morris, whom she met in London. The couple first arrived in New York City, where they stayed at William Randolph Hearst's suite at the Ritz Tower. After several weeks, Lederer and Morris departed for Los Angeles, where they stayed at Marion Davies' Beverly Hills mansion on Lexington Road. Davies and Hearst remained at San Simeon but, in an unusual move, they neither contacted Lederer nor invited her to any parties at Hearst Castle. At this point, Lederer had become persona non grata at San Simeon due to both her worsening drug addiction and overt lesbian relationships.
Plummeting six stories to the shrubbery below, Lederer broke her neck upon impact. Hospital attendants rushed to the shrubbery, but she died within several minutes. She was 25 years old. Early newspaper obituaries attributed Lederer's suicide to "acute melancholia" as described by her doctor, Samuel Hirshfeld, a frequent visitor at San Simeon and a personal acquaintance of Hearst. A subsequent obituary printed by Hearst's flagship newspaper The San Francisco Examiner instead depicted Lederer's suicide as an accidental mishap and attributed her involuntary hospitalization to "a nervous breakdown caused by overstudy".: "Miss Lederer, who had entered the hospital on Monday to recover from a nervous breakdown caused by overstudy, fell from the window when, weak from illness, she attempted to walk alone... A brilliant student, she had continued her studies since graduating from the Westlake School for Girls in 1926, and her recently completed an intensive period of education abroad.... This overstudy led to the collapse which caused her to enter the hospital Monday."
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